Criminal Enterprise, page 16
Doughty held the moment a beat too long. Then he turned and started for the elevator. “Grab your coat, Agent Windermere,” he called over his shoulder. “Maybe you want to tag along.”
—
DOUGHTY DROVE SLOWLY, too slowly, in his department Crown Vic. Windermere sat on her hands in the passenger seat, thinking about the Chevelle and how fast it could take her.
You have to be a team player, she thought. You want to be a real FBI agent, you have to learn how to put up with the bullshit.
Doughty took I-94 into Saint Paul and parked downtown. He led Windermere into a Starbucks beneath a couple of big office towers. Ordered a coffee and let Windermere fend for herself. “He’s late,” Doughty said, checking his watch.
Windermere waved off the barista. “Who is he?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
The front door opened, bells rang, and Windermere looked over as a nervous twentysomething walked in, dolled up in a flashy suit and designer shades. He took off the sunglasses, found Doughty and Windermere, and walked over, looking like a freshman who’d somehow wandered into the prom. “You guys the cops?” he said, his voice low.
“We’re better,” said Doughty. “FBI.”
“Jason Bernstein.” The kid looked at Doughty. “I guess I talked to you on the phone.” Then he looked at Windermere. “You his partner?”
Windermere nodded. “You want a coffee or something?”
Bernstein shook his head. “I just want to get this done.”
Doughty brought his coffee to a sofa and a couple of easy chairs in the back, away from the counter and the few mid-morning customers. Windermere followed Bernstein. The kid looked around, twice, before sitting down. He leaned forward, his elbows bouncing on his knees, jittery.
Windermere sat opposite the kid. Looked at Doughty, who was preoccupied, stirring sugar into his coffee. She looked at Bernstein again. “So what’s your story?” she said. “You saw this go down, or what?”
Bernstein looked at Doughty. “I don’t want my name on it,” he said. “And I want immunity.”
Doughty frowned. “What did you do?”
Bernstein looked at Windermere. Didn’t say anything. “The poker’s not our concern,” Windermere told him. “If you were just playing cards, you’ll be fine.”
Bernstein searched her eyes. “I don’t want my name on it.”
“No names.”
Bernstein swallowed. Then he launched into the play-by-play. The Friday-night game, around midnight. A bunch of the regulars there. “We’d been into it for an hour or so,” he said. “Someone buzzed the door, wanted in. Wouldn’t leave.”
“Game has a security guard, right?”
“Yeah,” Bernstein said, “but this was a chick outside. Said she wanted to party. The guard talked with Tom—with the organizer. He told her no for a while. Then he gave up.”
“Let her in,” said Windermere.
Bernstein nodded. “She came in with a dude, a guy in a ski mask. Had a big fucking gun, an M-16 or something. They emptied the safe, took our wallets, our watches, everything.”
“And killed the cook in the back.”
“Yeah.” Bernstein nodded, slow. “The guy with the rifle was saying something to—to the waitress. Toying with her. Then the guy comes out of the back with a pistol, tries to make a stand. The guy with the rifle lit him up.”
Doughty sat forward. “Nobody else has come forward from this thing. No witnesses, nothing. So why you?”
Bernstein looked at Windermere. “The kid’s dead, right? Someone should catch heat for it.”
“Probably won’t get your money back,” Doughty said. “If that’s what you’re after.”
“Fuck the money. I can’t sleep without seeing that kid’s face.”
Windermere nodded. “Okay, so what else? The guy was toying with the waitress, you said.”
“You said the guy wore a ski mask,” said Doughty. “What about the woman?”
Bernstein glanced at Windermere. “He was, like, playing with her or something. He asked her if she was scared.”
Bingo. “And the ski mask?”
“The girl didn’t wear one.” He frowned again. “Thing is, she’d been there before. She dyed her hair since, but it was definitely her.”
“She’s a player,” said Doughty.
“No.” Bernstein laughed, hollow. “She was awful at cards. She came with Pete Schneider. Sometimes he let her play with his money. Not a lot, though. She was pretty damn bad.”
Windermere smiled at him. “Pete Schneider.”
“Pete Schneider,” said Doughty.
Bernstein looked at each of them, one at a time. Then he sighed. “I guess you guys want to know where to find him.”
67
CHRIS RUSSELL SAT at her desk in the Hastings Police Department, staring at her computer screen, paging through Tony Schultz’s hard drive. She’d managed to convince the big dope to hand over his computer. Told him it was probably the only way they’d catch Roger Brill.
“Bullshit,” Schultz had replied. “I got personal shit on there.”
“I don’t care about your porno, Tony,” Russell said, and sighed. “Only way to track this guy Brill is to trace his e-mail backward.”
“What about his car?”
“His truck?” She laughed. “Tony, you told me Brill drove a dark SUV. You know how many Brills there are in the state driver database?”
Schultz had glared at her. “Said he was from Minneapolis.”
“And there’s sixty-five Brills in the Twin Cities phone book. None of them is your guy.” She put her hand on her hip. “You want those guns back, you gotta give me your hard drive.”
He’d glared at her some more. Then he swore, spat, slumped his shoulders, and helped her cart his yellowed computer tower out to her cruiser.
It wasn’t like she’d been lying to Schultz. Roger Brill was a goddamned wild-goose chase. Probably just an alias attached to a free Hotmail account. If she could trace Brill’s IP address, she might have a lead. And if she could pick up some intel about Schultz while she tried, hell, everybody wins.
Schultz’s hard drive wasn’t going to be much help, however. It was mostly just porn and lame e-mail forwards, a few family pictures. Russell recognized Scotty Montgomery from a couple of shots. Scotty Mo was a Hastings patrol officer; he’d married Schultz’s little sister. They had a couple of cute kids, little boys.
So the computer was pretty much a waste of time. Russell had been hoping for something drug-related, a saved e-mail or something, maybe a spreadsheet. But from the looks of it, Tony Schultz couldn’t even spell spreadsheet, much less figure out how to use one.
So, okay, Roger Brill. Russell loaded up Schultz’s e-mail page. Clicked on Roger Brill’s message, snooped around. A couple keystrokes later, she had an IP address copied and pasted. Cross your fingers, she thought, opening up a trace program on her own office computer. She entered Brill’s IP address and waited for the results to load. Then the page loaded, and Russell shook her head. “Shit.”
TC Wireless, the page said. An Internet service provider in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The trace program had come back with the ISP’s address, instead of Roger Brill’s.
It’s never easy, Russell thought, as she picked up the phone. Maybe they’re nice people, and I won’t need a warrant. She dialed the Twin Cities phone number and a woman picked up. “TC Wireless. Claudia speaking.”
Russell introduced herself, explained the situation, the e-mail. “I was thinking if I gave you the IP address, you could get me a bricks-and-mortar on my suspect,” she told the woman.
Claudia sucked her teeth. “One second.” Disappeared. Russell waited through half a song’s worth of instrumental soft rock. Then Claudia came back. “You have a warrant?”
Russell sighed. “Not yet.”
“We can’t give out information about our clients without a warrant,” the woman told her. “It’s a privacy thing, you understand?”
“Privacy,” Russell said. “Yeah, I understand.”
She hung up the phone. Swore again. TC Wireless, she thought. So we’ve narrowed Roger Brill down to about three million people. She stared at her computer for a minute or two. Then she reached for her phone again to see about that warrant.
68
KIRK STEVENS SAT in his living room, watching as a fat man on the television marinated a big chunk of rattlesnake. The Timberwolves weren’t playing, nor the Bucks nor the Bulls, and Stevens had been channel-surfing for more than an hour, trying to find something to distract him from Carter Tomlin.
It had been a couple of days since Tomlin’s party, and Stevens couldn’t chase the showdown in the train room from his mind. Couldn’t forget Tomlin’s face—anger verging on panic—or shake the haunting feeling that he’d blown his best shot at uncovering the man’s secrets.
He was hiding something, Stevens kept thinking. I let him walk out of that basement without giving it up.
On-screen, the fat man was grilling the rattlesnake on a barbecue the size of an oil tanker truck. Stevens sighed and turned to his wife. “You want to watch a movie or something?”
Nancy looked up from her makeshift bed on the couch, where she’d covered herself in equal parts paperwork, blanket, and dog. She yawned. “I have to make it through this crap before I fall asleep.”
Stevens looked at the dog, an eighty-pound German shepherd his son had insisted they name Triceratops. “What about you, dog? What do you want to watch?”
Triceratops studied him with concerned eyes, then lay his head down and sighed, long and expressive. “Yeah,” said Stevens. “My sentiments exactly.”
He’d toyed with the idea of calling Windermere. Had argued with himself for two long days, and had decided against it. What good would it do her to know that his instincts matched hers? What proof could he offer?
If I had something concrete, Stevens thought, I could call her. Right now, all I have is a guy who’s maybe a little protective of his model trains. A hunch, nothing more.
Still, the feeling was agonizing.
Stevens picked up the remote again and changed the channel. Found an action movie. A couple of cops were holed up in a warehouse somewhere while things exploded around them. Nancy looked up again. “Anything but this,” she said. “Kirk, please.”
Stevens sighed again and turned off the TV. “Where’s Andrea?”
“Science project at Megan’s.”
“JJ?”
Nancy gestured toward the front stairs. “Xbox.”
Stevens stood, stretching, and walked out to the front hall and upstairs to JJ’s room, where his nine-year-old son sat on his carpet, killing zombies. Stevens mussed his son’s hair. “Whatcha doing?”
“Resident Evil,” his son replied. On his TV screen, a young patrol cop and a woman in a torn evening gown were blasting away at an army of the undead. “Raccoon City is under attack.”
“Sounds serious,” said Stevens. “You want some help?”
Without looking up, his son passed him a controller. “You shoot with the trigger button.”
Stevens picked up the controller and pressed start. Within seconds, the zombie horde was upon him. Within minutes, he was dead. JJ frowned at him. “Dad.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re wasting my lives. I gotta beat the boss at the end of this level.”
“Sorry, kiddo.” Stevens stood up again. “I’m cramping your style.” He walked out of his son’s room and stood in the dark hall, feeling bored and restless and indecisive. He wanted to know more about Tomlin, he realized. And not just for Windermere now.
Downstairs, the phone started to ring. Nancy groaned. “I’ll get it,” he called.
“Too late,” she replied. “It’s for you, Agent Stevens.”
He walked down the stairs and into the living room. Cocked his head at his wife. She shrugged. “A woman.”
“Windermere?”
“I don’t know.” She handed him the phone. “Maybe. Or another of your many admirers.”
Stevens took the phone. “This is Agent Stevens.”
“Agent Stevens.” A woman’s voice. Not Windermere. “It’s Paula Franklin.”
Stevens frowned. “Who?”
“BCA forensics,” she said. “In the lab in Bemidji. Got the DNA results for your bodies in the woods.”
“Oh.” Stevens walked out to the front hall. “Right. Good.”
“Ran a hurry-up drill on them, too,” Franklin said. “Usually these tests take a hell of a lot longer.”
Stevens stared out the window and didn’t say anything. The Danzer case seemed years behind him already. After a moment, Franklin continued. “Anyway, no surprises in the results. Sylvia Danzer in the backseat and David Samson in the front.”
“Sure,” Stevens said. “Just like we figured.”
“We had a look at the remains, too,” Franklin told him. “Samson’s rib cage bore nicks and gouges consistent with a stabbing. Again, no real surprise, given the knife in his chest. Danzer, though, is kind of interesting.”
“How so?”
Franklin exhaled. “Well, her arm was broken, for starters. A couple of ribs. And her hands, Agent Stevens—her fingers were pretty torn up.”
Stevens frowned. “Cut, you mean.”
“And often. The palms of her hands, too. Classic defense wounds, and it looks like the same knife as what stabbed David Samson.” Franklin paused. “There was a hell of a fight up there, from the looks of it.”
“I’d say so.” Stevens glanced back in at Nancy. “I can drive up tomorrow, have a look at the remains.”
“No need. I’ll send the relevant stuff to your office.” She paused again. “Probably enough in the report to close the case, Agent. Congratulations.”
Stevens said nothing.
“Agent Stevens?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Great. Thanks for this. Your hard work.”
“Our pleasure. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do.” Stevens thanked Franklin again and ended the call. Case closed, he thought. As closed as it ever will be.
He stood in the hallway, picturing Sylvia Danzer and David Samson, alone in the woods, fighting and dying. He stood there a long time, and when he turned back to the living room, where Nancy and the dog both lay on the couch, fast asleep, he felt empty inside, not accomplished. At least I’m not worrying about Tomlin, he thought. That’s something.
As far as victories went, though, it was minor, and short-lived.
69
THEY FOUND Pete Schneider half asleep in his swank Saint Paul condo. Arrived at his door just as a pretty redheaded girl slipped out, blushing, last night’s dress hanging wrinkled from her shoulders. She smiled briefly at Windermere, then ducked past, her eyes low. Doughty watched her walk to the elevator while Windermere stuck a foot between Schneider’s door and the frame. She knocked loudly, and called out his name.
Schneider came padding down the hall in flannel pajama pants, no shirt, his shaggy hair mussed. He looked at Windermere through bleary eyes. “Yeah?”
Windermere showed him her badge. “Shit,” he said. He opened the door wider and led them down the hall.
—
SCHNEIDER’S APARTMENT was bachelor-pad chic. Leather and chrome couches, a flat-screen TV. Floor-to-ceiling windows and a kitchen piled high with take-out containers. Schneider sat on the couch and motioned to a couple of easy chairs. Doughty eased himself down. Windermere stood.
“So, what’s up?” Schneider said. Windermere wondered if the guy had to work at sounding bored, or if it came natural. “What can I do for the Federal Bureau of Investigation this morning?”
“It’s mid-afternoon,” said Doughty. “We’re here about a girl.”
“A girl.” Schneider smiled sideways at Windermere. “Which one?”
“How about this?” said Windermere. “You play poker in a warehouse in the North End. Used to bring a friend with you. That’s the girl.”
Schneider’s smile faded. “I should call a lawyer.”
“You guilty of something?”
Schneider stared at her and didn’t say anything.
“We don’t give a damn about the card game,” she said. “It’s your girlfriend we’re after. You tell us about her and you won’t need a lawyer.”
Schneider sighed. “Fine,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“That poker game of yours, in the warehouse,” said Windermere. “There was a robbery. The cook—what’s his name, Robinson? He got shot.”
Schneider stared at her. “And what, you think she did it?”
“We don’t think anything yet,” said Doughty.
“Tell us about the girl,” said Windermere. “Maybe tell us where you were on Friday night.”
“I wasn’t there.” Schneider didn’t sound nearly so bored now. “I haven’t been to that game in over a month.”
“You lose all your money?”
He looked away. “I went on a cold streak. Been working a lot, trying to rebuild my bankroll.”
“Working,” said Windermere. “Where?”
“Dooly’s,” he said. “It’s a bar. I was bartending every night this week. Call and check. Everybody in the place knows me.”
Windermere studied his face but said nothing. Doughty, mercifully, followed her lead. After a moment, Schneider continued. “Look, as far as Tricia is concerned, I don’t know what to tell you. We broke up a couple months back.”
“Tricia,” said Windermere. “Okay. What about a last name?”
Schneider sighed again, like it was the toughest thing in the world. “Henderson,” he said. “Tricia Henderson.”
“And that’s all you know.”
He nodded. “That’s it.”
“What about where she’s living now?”
“She was living here,” he said, shrugging, “until we broke up. Then she moved to I don’t know where. So, no, I don’t know where she is right now.”
